Parenting Tips: Help! My Child is Addicted to Facebook!

Facebook stands as a revolutionary way for friends to stay in touch, regardless of the age. It also stands as being highly addictive to adults and children alike, according to psychologists. If you think your child is spending too much time on Facebook to the exclusion of his real life, you may be wondering what you can do about it.

In this colorful war of parent against Facebook addiction, remember one thing: You are Batman, and Facebook is the Joker. You will win this fight, as well as the war.

What makes me so sure? Did I mention that YOU are the parent? Let's start with the extreme: Your house, your electricity, your rules.

So, if you believe your child has a problem with Facebook bordering on addiction, you are the one who has to take action. You are going to see pain, tantrums, and tears for any attempt to restrict your child in this area. But seriously, what's the worst outcome from putting some parameters on how your child plays online? He'll have more time? He'll see his friends more? He'll READ? He'll go outside and collect leaves from trees or pick cherries from a neighbor's tree?

For all of your initial apprehension, know that the end result is nothing that will be harmful to the child. If you worry about it for a second, put it into perspective in relation to other parenting decisions you've made. Do you limit the amount of ice cream your child can eat? Do you allow him to eat it before bed? Do you require him to brush his teeth afterwards. Why? And...does he seem to be suffering from the fact that you have made these boundaries? Of course not!

That said, the initial reaction may seem horrible to you, something right of the Exorcist even. Okay, perhaps that's a bit extreme.

According to therapists, someone with a Facebook addiction (and, yes, that's how they refer to it) will suffer anxiety when faced with having his online time curtailed. Think of how you react when you lose your electricity because of a storm. You may remember reading comic books by candlelight as a child when your family lost electricity. But for as freeing as that was when *we* were children, as we grew up, a power outage can cripple us now. No TV? No radio? Well, what's left to do but take a nap? But if you've been involved in a long outage, you realize you adapt and begin to slow your life down.

Your child will certainly go through the same sort of adaptation process if you limit his access to Facebook. You will have to be patient. More importantly, you have to be the parent who keeps putting the situation in perspective for the child.

The first step to breaking your child's Facebook addiction is to come up with strong boundaries---then stick with them. Do not make arbitrary rules by reacting too quickly. Talk it over with a spouse, partner, etc., then make the plan.

Time seems to be a major issue. Encourage your child to make the Facebook time quality time for interacting with friends, as opposed to mindless trolling and chatting. This will happen simply by limiting the amount of time the child can spend on the Internet.

Know that your child will probably rebel, and even try to sneak in a little online time. You should move the computer(s) to a common family space. This will not only limit the time, but it will put the child back in the stream of your family's life as opposed to being locked away behind closed doors.

Build alternatives into the plan. You will have to figure out ways to fill that time void as you will be hearing, "I'm BORED!" Don't fill it up with chores, although they can be built in gradually. Don't make it obvious busy work or something out of a summer arts & craft camp.

You'll get grumpiness and griping, and you don't like to see your child unhappy, now do you? Well, if you polled him, you'd find he's not all that happy about the curfew you've set for him either. He'll get over it, and he'll be better for it.

Much has been written on parenting in the technological age, but perhaps that's making it way too complicated. We all had rich, full lives before Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. We thought we were happy, right? So were we deluding ourselves? Of course not.

The bottom line is, you want the best for your child long term. You have the right, and the obligation, to come up with a rule book by which your family operates. What is right for one family, may not be right for your family, but your immediate obligation is to YOUR family and to raising your children to be the best they can be for themselves and for society at large for years to come.